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East Oregonian
Friday, March 1, 2019
Benefits: ‘I can’t be out there. I’m very scared’
Continued from Page A1
About 3,000 Oregonians are
evaluated each year on the
date they started service. A
caseworker assessed Rhome
on Feb. 5 by chatting with
her about her challenges
in such things as dressing,
getting around and doing
housework. The worker
found Rhome to be indepen-
dent in grooming, dressing
and getting around, but defi-
cient in meal preparation,
housekeeping, shopping and
other tasks. Rhome’s service
priority level of 18, however,
means she is too indepen-
dent for the program. Any-
thing above 13 is too high.
A year ago, she got a 7. Indi-
viduals assessed at levels
from 14-17 can hang on to
their benefits if they can’t
find safe housing.
Rhome is not a picture
of health. She sat on the
edge of her bed, skin pale
and voice breathy. Chronic
kidney disease has swelled
her legs. Her left arm jerks
as if it has a life of its own.
Near one wall of her room
is a fleet of mobility equip-
ment — walker, wheelchair
and motorized chair. Tra-
peze grab bars hang above
her hospital-style bed and
toilet. She has a cache of ice
packs and heating pads and a
nebulizer at the ready. A Sun
Terrace medication review
report on Rhome’s table lists
numerous diagnoses, includ-
ing heart and lung problems,
tremors and bipolar disorder.
A list of Rhome’s medica-
tions is four pages long.
Despite her maladies,
Rhome seems to appreci-
ate the small things. She
treasures her Yorkshire ter-
rier, Ashley, who snuggles
nearby. The word “Grati-
tude” is stenciled on one wall
and “Blessed” on another. A
vintage, well-thumbed King
James Bible sits atop the
microwave.
Her positive nature and
tendency to overestimate
her own abilities might
have been her undoing, said
Rhome’s daughter, Heather
Gilham.
“Mom likes to think she’s
independent, but she’s not,”
Gilham said, “She talks a
good game, but she needs
to be in an assisted living
facility.”
Honest evaluation
Oregon’s long-term care
ombudsman Fred Steele
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
A photo of a young and healthy Jeanne Rhome from 1988
hangs on a memory board on the wall of her room at Sun Ter-
race assisted living facility in Hermiston.
“I’M OVERWHELMED.
I PHYSICALLY CAN’T TAKE
CARE OF MYSELF. I FEEL
LIKE I’M BEING JUDGED.”
Jeanne Rhome, a 63-year-old stroke and heart attack survivor,
who will soon stop receiving the Medicaid payments
said. “The state hasn’t pro-
vided any support for look-
ing for emergency housing.”
Steele said the ombuds-
man’s office helps people
navigate the appeals pro-
cess and deal with other
issues.
‘I feel like
I’m being judged’
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
A nebulizer and inhalers sit on a night stand next to Jeanne Rhome’s bed in her room at Sun
Terrace assisted living facility in Hermiston.
is wary of the evaluation
process.
“I’m concerned about
the level of subjectiveness
from one case manager to
the next in properly evaluat-
ing the needs of an individ-
ual,” he said. “Individuals
like to believe themselves to
be more independent than
they actually are. When it
comes to toilet and bath-
ing assistance, people might
not want to admit they need
help.”
Cottingham said 1,210
individuals out of 35,000
Medicaid long-term care
consumers were deter-
mined to be ineligible.
“It continues to be a
concern around the state,”
Steele said.
Steele made his comment
on Tuesday. On Wednesday,
something happened that
could rescue Rhome and
some of the other seniors
from losing Medicaid bene-
fits. DHS filed a temporary
administrative order adding
individuals at service level
18 (such as Rhome) to those
allowed to keep their long-
term care housing while
they look for safe replace-
ment housing. This could
take months or years.
Rhome has already
appealed her loss of eligi-
bility. She held up a quar-
ter-inch-thick sheaf of DHS
rules on the topic. Until the
appeal is decided, Rhome
will stay at Sun Terrace, but
if she loses she must pay the
benefits back. Her Social
Security and Supplemental
Security Income payments
amount to $791. From that,
she pays $615 to Sun Ter-
race as a copayment.
Gilham worries about
how little time the seniors
have to find new living sit-
uations. Her mom’s assess-
ment happened on Feb. 5.
She received the notice a
week later saying she would
lose benefits as of Feb. 28.
“How do you expect peo-
ple to move 16 days after
receiving a notice?” Gilham
Pat
Williams,
who
moved from Sun Terrace to
an apartment on Wednes-
day, said she will miss the
facility’s medication man-
agement, meals and an envi-
ronment set up for seniors.
She’ll miss her good friend
June.
“We
play
Yahtzee
together and do beading,”
Williams said.
APD’s director doesn’t
conceal her distress about
such situations. She got into
this line of work because
of an affinity for aging
Oregonians.
“All of these changes are
complex and difficult and
hard,” Cottingham said.
“We care so much. We want
to help our state’s most
vulnerable.”
However, she said, the
pot of money is only so big.
Spending wisely to make
the least painful impacts on
consumers is the goal. One
strategy to reduce costs
involves increasing training
for case managers to ensure
policies are more consis-
tently followed statewide.
Rhome will take her
chances with the appeal.
She can’t afford housing
and her daughter’s home
has hallways and doorways
too narrow for her mobility
equipment.
“I’m
overwhelmed,”
Rhome said. “I physically
can’t take care of myself. I
feel like I’m being judged.”
She swept her hand
toward the window and the
landscape beyond.
“I can’t be out there,” she
said. ”I’m very scared.”
Rhome will likely get
to stay put, said APD com-
munications officer Elisa
Williams.
“We did a broad review
of residents at Sun Terrace
who have received their
annual Medicaid assess-
ments since the beginning
of the year,” Williams said.
“In this group, we cannot
definitively state that the
2017 changes were a decid-
ing factor …. however the
consumers here will ben-
efit from (extended waiver
eligibility) and stay in their
homes at Sun Terrace.”
On Thursday, Rhome got
some good news. Her her
social worker informed her
she is eligible to stay until
August when she will be
reassessed.
Contact Kathy Aney at
kaney@eastoregonian.com
or 541-966-0810.
Emergency: Highway closures, outages
Mosa: ‘I don’t get it. ... I’m so frustrated’
Continued from Page A1
Continued from Page A1
Ocean combined to create
this,” Oviatt said. “In the
last three weeks, cold air has
infiltrated the entire state.”
Warm, dry air could
wipe out the drought mitiga-
tion benefits quickly with a
fast runoff, or rain on top of
snow could cause flooding,
Oviatt said, but the forecast
over the next 8-14 days was
for cold temperatures.
“We’re cautiously opti-
mistic and hope the trend
continues,” Oviatt said.
The belated blast of win-
ter has hit communities
with heavy snow and ice
accumulation, high winds,
flooding and landslides, the
governor’s office said.
Heavy snow in Spring-
field caused the roof of
a gym at Thurston High
School to partially col-
lapse Wednesday, The Reg-
ister-Guard of Eugene
reported. There were no
injuries.
A town in the Cascade
Range experiencing a pro-
longed blackout has been
struggling. Oakridge was
the town where an Amtrak
train was stranded for about
36 hours this week because
of fallen trees and snow on
the tracks. The passengers
had electrical power while
the town didn’t and they
stayed on board. Passengers
saw townspeople on snow-
shoes making their way
through
snow-blanketed
streets.
Ray’s Food Place in the
town of 3,200 people is
open, but customers nav-
igate the darkened aisles
said there’s a simple rea-
son why the police are at
Mosa more than other bars
in town: “Every time some-
thing happened, they said
to call, so we called.”
Put booze and people
together, she said, and on
occasion problems arise.
That happens at every bar,
Winn contended, but other
places don’t calls the cops,
so Mosa ends up sporting
the black eye of the local
bar scene.
Winn
acknowledged
Mosa has a reputation for
being rough, but it is not
one she wants for the bar.
She said she does not grasp
why some patrons stir up
problems in and outside
her bar.
“I don’t get it, I just
don’t get it,” she said. “I’m
so frustrated.”
She said owning the
bar is stressful and has
taken a toll on her health.
Every night before going
to bed, she said, she wor-
ries there will be another
fight, another call to the
cops. She said she dreads
the possibility the Oregon
Liquor Control Commis-
sion, which regulates bars,
will suspend or revoke her
license to sell booze.
She said she sunk all
the money she won in
an accident settlement to
open Mosa 13 years ago
as Whistler’s Pub, and the
bar is her source of income.
More security won’t stop
fights, she said, not that she
could afford that. Wednes-
day night, she said, the bar
AP Photo/Andrew Selsky, File
In this Sunday, Feb. 17, 2019, file photo, snowshoers Scott
Stice, right, and Jeanine Stice, of Salem, take in the view
from snow-covered Todd Lake in the Cascade Range in Cen-
tral Oregon.
with flashlights, the Regis-
ter-Guard reported. Pay-
ments are accepted only in
cash or local check, with
credit card machines down.
Most businesses in town
were closed Wednesday
in the town that lies along
Highway 58 that goes over
Willamette Pass and to a
ski area there. The road has
been closed to regular traf-
fic with downed trees lining
the roadside.
The highway closure
and the power outage are a
“double whammy,” said res-
ident Tim Foster.
“It just takes away any
of hope of being able to
do anything,” Foster told
the Register-Guard, whose
reporter was escorted to
the town Wednesday by
the Oregon Department of
Transportation.
In Central Oregon,
which has 113 percent over
normal snowpack, an off-
road enthusiast has been
missing for four days, the
Deschutes County Sheriff’s
Office reported.
Jeremy Taylor, 36, of
Sunriver, was last seen get-
ting gas on Sunday in Sun-
river, a resort community
south of Bend.
“He is known to frequent
the forested area to the
west of Sunriver where he
enjoyed off-roading. How-
ever, it is unknown where
he was going after getting
gas in Sunriver on Sunday,”
the sheriff’s office said.
Brown made the emer-
gency declaration for Coos,
Curry, Deschutes, Douglas,
Jackson, Josephine, Klam-
ath, Lane, Linn, and Mar-
ion counties.
made all of $162 in sales.
She filed for bankruptcy in
2014 and again in 2018.
But Mosa has sailed
rough seas before.
The OLCC in 2008 fined
Mosa $990 for allowing an
employee to serve alcohol
without a service permit
and fined the bar $2,970 in
2009 for the same problem,
according to public records
from the OLCC. Distur-
bances, fights and drunken
drivers led to dozens of
reports from 2006-11 from
OLCC agents on problems
and corrective action, such
as being sure to record
incidents in a log book or
not over-serving patrons.
The liquor commis-
sion in late 2011 put the
bar on a compliance plan
after finding it had a “his-
tory of serious and per-
sistent problems.” The
agency documented 28
serious incidents that year
alone. Those included two
thefts, five times a patron
harassed other patrons and
13 fights, one involving the
use of mace and four with
injuries.
The liquor commission
can yank a bar’s license
to sell alcohol, but OLCC
spokesperson Matt Van
Sickle said the renewal
licensing group consid-
ers a couple of things
before making that move.
Reports and recommen-
dations from law enforce-
ment carry weight, as does
that history of serious and
persistent problems. The
OLCC has the dual role of
enforcement and promot-
ing business, and that takes
careful navigation, he said,
so even with the worst
bars, revoking a license is
a transparent process that
involves an administrative
law judge before the com-
mission gets the final say,
and the bar’s representa-
tives have the right to give
their side at each step.
“We want to give
them the opportunity to
improve,” Van Sickle.
Mosa seemed to do that
on the compliance plan,
receiving only three action
reports in first few months
following the plan. The last
report came in May 2012
for a fight that took place in
front of the bar two months
earlier. Winn said the lack
of the reports show Mosa is
following the rules.
Roberts said the lack
of reports shows a discon-
nect between what happens
on the local level and the
OLCC regional office in
Bend. He said his depart-
ment sends reports about
Mosa, but those don’t seem
to end up with local OLCC
agents, and that leaves the
city police department to
keep an eye on bars and
issue citations. He also said
the bar’s owners and staff
need to step up.
“All we’re asking is just
be responsible for what
you’re doing,” Roberts
said.
Winn contended she
does that, but she also
could use some help from
the police. Rather than
bad-mouthing Mosa, she
said, Roberts could talk to
her about finding solutions
to the problems at Mosa.